A conspiracy (of dunces)

I know the article I’m about to quote is a few days old, but I’ve been on vacation, and have some catching up to do.

The Illuminati. The Bilderbergers. The Freemasons. The Trilateral Commission. The Lizard People (Reptilians). The Jooooooooos.

The NRA? Gun Manufacturers?

Maybe those last two are little bit of a stretch. Maybe not, if you listen to what some people on the political left say.

There is a common theme in the attacks directed at the NRA and firearms industry by the media and the anti-gun politicians and activists:

The NRA and gun companies doesn’t care about you. They don’t care about your rights. They don’t care about your life. All they want to do is sell you guns and watch you drown in blood. The NRA and gun makers love mass shootings and high profile murders because they can use them to manipulate you into buying even more guns for you to kill yourselves with. The NRA and gun makers are entwined in an evil conspiracy to profit from the slaughter of innocent people.

To a reasonable person, this might seems ridiculously far-fetched and down right insulting to the decent people who work in the firearms industry. I guess Isvari Mohan of the Boston Globe is not a reasonable person.

If it seems wrong to talk about a mass shooting as a business issue, you’re right. It’s wrong. But thanks to the National Rifle Association and the $13.5 billion-in-revenue gun industry, money is inextricably tied to the seemingly endless string of killings plaguing our country… But for the NRA, the gun industry, and the politicians they bankroll, spasms of violence like Orlando are an obscene blessing.

This is disgusting. No one in the firearms industry revels in a mass shooting or terrorist attack. I can testify to that with my very own eyes.

No one came into the office on June 13th, with a smile on their face, saying: “Did you see the news on Sunday? We are going to be rolling in dough.”

Lobbying is one of the most successful businesses in this country, one the gun industry is especially good at. The NRA has so much power that even when 90 percent of Americans said they wanted universal background checks after the Newtown, Conn., massacre, according to a CNN/ORC poll, there was no federal action… The problem is extremely wealthy people, gun makers, and the NRA, can now spend as much as they want to buy candidates.

But in the warped mind of the conspiracy theorist, 75th might as well be 1st. There is no other money in politics than gun money and the NRA is the entity that shovels it out.

The NRA – and the five million people who get its magazines – are on a mission to prove that guns make us safer… (Quotes Kellerman Study) … In other words, guns make you less safe and they’re not that great for self-defense.”

Yes, yes, yes, I know.. owning a gun means that I am more likely that I am going shoot my my wife and kids until the home invader takes my gun away from me to kill me with it. Then again, according to liberals, I’m also too stupid to decide was car I should drive, what beverage I can drink, how big my burger should be, what I should be able to watch on TV, and pretty much every other personal choice I can make. So, I’m going to take this one with a grain of salt … if the liberals will let me have a grain of salt.

Until the 1960s, the Supreme Court had only dealt with a few gun control cases and held that the Second Amendment was related to militia and collective rights, not individual rights. In 2008, thanks to a long NRA campaign, the Court held in Heller that the Second Amendment does grant an individual right.

OH GOD NO!!! THE NRA IS MAKING DECISIONS FOR SCOTUS NOW TOO!!! “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” ACTUALLY MEANS “ALL THE PEOPLE”!?! OH THE HORROR!!!

Just to be clear: The gun industry does not actually care about your Second Amendment rights; they don’t even care about your life. They only care about profit.

Just to be clear: we absolutely do care about gun rights. Despite what Ms. Mohan seems to believe, the gun industry is not a few fat cats smoking cigars and drinking scotch atop a mountain of skulls. We are men an women who love our jobs and are passionate, dedicated firearms enthusiasts. We have spouses and children. We value life. We go to work in a industry we believe in. Yes, we want to make profit, so does ever industry. But we don’t want to profit off enormities. We want to profit off good products made for good people who will use and enjoy them responsibly.

Since business is the only thing that seems to speak to the NRA and the gun industry, one solution to the gun culture problem might be boycotting businesses that refuse to support responsible gun ownership. A lot of retirement stocks are invested in the gun industry – and they went up after the Orlando shooting – so people who support gun control might want to prevent their savings from being invested in companies that profit when people die.

This is movie stock market thinking. Yes, stock value is in part determined by perceived value of the company. But a company’s worth is in its earnings. If antis don’t invest their 410(k)s into gun companies, we won’t magically dry up and die. There is real earnings in people buying guns. It’s not the investors that cause the industry to hit record highs in value, it is the record gun sales that are doing that.

The only purpose of guns is killing. And the only purpose of the gun industry is to sell them. Next time you think about buying a gun, think about that.

I should say that killing is not the only purpose of guns, but I won’t. All target practice is killing practice, even if you don’t ever intend to kill. I will agree with Ms. Mohan on this point, but I will take it one step further. I want the tools to kill. I don’t want to commit murder. I do want the ability to defend myself with lethal force if necessary. I do think about that when I buy guns, which is why I own them. Whether it be the government or criminals (or both), I don’t want somebody else to have the monopoly on violence. I want to be able to hold my own and meet force with force.

Ms. Mohan is supposed to be some sort of prodigy genius, writing columns for the Globe and giving TEDx talks. To me, this article seems less like critical thought and more like a mix of Liberal anti business and anti gun platitudes, lightly flavored with conspiracy.

Make no mistake: The newest iteration of the pro-gun agenda has nothing to do with protecting LGBT lives and everything to do with blindly and irresponsibly selling guns to an untapped market. Telling LGBT people to carry guns so they don’t get “bashed” — as the Pink Pistols group has done recently — is like telling a woman to stop wearing short skirts to avoid rape. It’s out of touch and deflects blame from those who should truly be held accountable.

If members of the Pink Pistols are really concerned about ending deadly violence in the LGBT community, they could start by cutting their ties with the gay bashers at the NRA.

Again, the NRA doesn’t care about you or your life. We’re just in it for profit. Evil, evil, profit. All the gun ranges and firearms instructors that were giving away free training to the LGBT community were doing that because… ? At the same time that well intentioned Liberals were doing their damnedest to make sure that EVERYBODY knew that Islam had nothing to do with the killing of 49 people and the wounding of 50 others at a gay club. So that the next time a man shows up with a gun shouting “Allah Akbar” at a gay hot spot, people know he’s just there to party.

Also… no, telling people to defend themselves is not victim blaming. The gay men and women at Pulse were no asking to be shot and murdered by an Islamic terrorist. But it is irresponsible to put yourself at the mercy of someone who has proven that they have no mercy for you. I don’t blame the Jews of Europe for what the Nazis believed or did. But I will not understand why so many Jews chose to board the cattle cars, hoping that if they just worked hard, they would survive the camps. All the Liberal platitudes in the world won’t stop the next radical Islamist from attacking his target. A well placed bullet will.

You wouldn’t blame a dog for overeating; you blame the owners for overfeeding him. Nor do you blame a dog for biting a neighbor. You might punish him, but the punishment is training, not a recognition of authentic responsibility on the part of the canine. And the way that you think of a dog, is the way that the left thinks of you. When you misbehave, the left looks around for your owner.

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been “liberated” to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it’s because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it’s because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem.

With this in mind, it is easy to understand why the Liberals in the media and advocacy groups don’t see how their actions drive gun sales and a growing gun culture. It is not their incessant desire to ban guns or hinder honest citizens’ ability to buy them or their epic transparent bumblefucking of trying to explain away terrorism** that drives gun sales. They do not believe that regular people not have cognitive function to say “the government isn’t going to protect me, so I should buy the tools to protect myself before that same government bans them.” It is the NRA whispering mind controlling evil into the ear of the people like Emperor Palpatine.

**Watching the response to the Pulse shooting by Liberals in the media and Washington was a surreal experience. It was like watching New York Fashion Week if all the models looked like Hilary Clinton and showed up naked and demanded that we acknowledge how beautiful and elegant everything is. All but the most ardent Liberals were gagging, wondering if what they were seeing was for real, while the argent Liberals were calling them “bigots” for not ooing and ahhing. I fully expected the news of that week to close with a monologue from Rod Serling.

Understanding the Liberal world view that we are puppets and the NRA and gun industry are our puppet masters explains why groups like Everytown and MDA, as well as so many others, believe what stands in their way is the NRA and gun makers.

We are not evil. We are not soulless monsters that turn human misery and death into profit to feed our gluttonous appetites. We are not stupid, consumerist sheep. And we are certainly not a monolithic, top down group that manipulates the helpless masses for our own desire or world domination.

We are freedom loving people, who enjoy a sport, and want to own the tools we desire for our self defense.

People who support gun control are not anti violence. They are completely on board with the projection of force by State actors against those with which they disagree. They just don’t want to directly get their own hands bloody. Think about that the next time you buy a gun.

I can’t get past the fustercluck that they can’t seem to realize the NRA has nothing to do with gun manufacturing. The trade group is the NSSF. Gun manufacturers have a cordial relationship with the NRA because they realize the NRA lobbies effectively and is good for their business; they give NRA membership (or discounts) away because it’s good for their business. The NSSF is the group that promotes the gun manufacturing industry.